Technical guide #3 - The iPod on my double page spread

In this technical guide you will see how I made the iPod in the top corner of my DPS. However for this I dont actually have that same iPod so I will have to use mine, Which unfortunately is quite scratched. But you will still see how I made it.


1. Firstly you will need to take a picture of an iPod with the headphones in. Make sure u arrange the headphones and the iPod nicely as it will not be possible to change later on. After the picture is taken, open it in Photoshop.







2. Once you have done this use the spot healing brush tool (L) to remove any unwanted scratches, marks or fingerprints.



3. Now that you have cleaned up the picture you will now need to delete the background. There are a few different ways you can do this, such as using "Colour Range" or using "Magnetic Lasso Tool". However I find the easiest one is to use the "Magic Wand Tool" which will automaticall outline the background for you. Once you do this, right click on the background and click "select similar". If done correctly it should select everything in the background. After that just click delete and it should get rid of your background. You may need to use the Eraser Tool and go around and manually rub a few things out.


4. You can finish it off like this however, I believe to get top marks it looks great if you add a Drop Shadow, which is very simple. All you do is go to "Layer", "Layer Style" then select "Drop Shadow". A box will then pop up allowing you to create a shadow to how you would like it. In the picture below it will show the settings I set my shadow to.




















5. Now to add the text. All you need to do here is select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) then draw a box to your desired area (in this case, the iPod screen). Once there you then type what you want and rotate the text to fit perfectly.

6. Finally all you need to do is add it to your document and it should add that little bit extra professionalism to the page.

Technical guide #2 - The front cover image

In this technical guide I will show you how I edited the Picture of Jason to make it have that golden blur to it.

1. Firstly open the picture you wish to edit in Photoshop CS4.












2. Now before you do anything now, to get the best out of your model and the background, select the spot healing brush tool, which will get rid of any unwanted marks on either your model or the background. For my image I used this to blend in the fake tattoo to his skin so that it looked a little bit more real, I also used it to remove any marks on jason's skin and finally to remove a mark on the wall in the background.

Spot Healing Brush Tool (J)

3. Now you will need to make the picture that gold colour (or any other colour you wish). To do this you will select "Image", "Adjustments" then "Hue/Saturation" (or to speed things up just press "Ctnl+U"). Once you have done this a screen will pop up with three bars; One reading "Hue", one reading "Saturation" and the other reading "Lightness". Now before you edit these make sure you have checked the box saying "Colorize". To get the effect I got you will have to put the "Hue" to 45,  the "Saturation" to 37 and the "Lightness" to +1.







4. Now you have the golden look to it, the darker parts of the picture are starting to fade. To fix this I then selected "Image", "Adjustments" then "Brightness/Contrast". Again you will need to play around with this until you find the look you desire. My "Brightness/Contrast" was set at "Brightness" -30 and "Contrast" 64.

















5. Finally you have that look you were after, so now all you need to do is save your picture as a JPEG and then import it to Adobe InDesign and use it as the background to your magazine front cover.

Diary week 15

DIARY WEEK FIFTEEN
This week I am showing people who use my blog how I made different features in my magazine on Adobe Photoshop CS4 through the use of my technical guide. This is a good way to show my understanding of the ICT used in magazine making industries and it will also show how my computing skills have developed since my preliminary task.

Technical Guide #1 - The "Free CD" sticker

Photoshop CS4 was extremelly important in the making of my Music magazine. A few examples of how I used Photoshop is the making of the sticker on the front cover, the colour effect on Jason and the iPod in the top corner of my double page spread. In this example I will show you how I made the sticker.

1.Making the sticker I started by simply drawing a circle and selecting the colour I wanted. Make sure your Rasterize it before doing anything else.

  2. I then took a picture of some old crumpled up paper and uploaded it to Photoshop in a new page. 

3. After this you will need to use the black arrow at the top of the tool bar and drag the picture of the paper over the circle you just made. Once you have done this you will then have to hold control and click on the picture of the circle on the layers section at the right of the page. If done correctly you will then see an outline of a circle on top of the paper.

4.Once you have done that you now need to select “Add Layer Mask” which you will find in the bottom right corner undernieth your Layers tool bar. It will look like a box with a circle in it.

5. Now you should see a circle filled with the picture of paper. Now you will need to select the rubber tool and rub out enough of the paper to make it look as if the paper is worn out and peeling off.

6. Now that you have the look of a torn sticker you now need to merge the two layers and then adding a drop shadow. This is done by selecting “Layer”, then “Layer Style” then finally “Drop Shadow”. Once done an option will pop up where you can customise your shadow to make it as big or as small as you wish.

7. Now you will need to use the same rubber tool as before and take off the edges that you want to make the sticker really look like its peeling back.

8. Finally to finish off your sticker add text to it then upload it to your magazine!  

Here is the sticker highlighted in the magazine.